Besides being cold they were fed on very poor food.

Jenkins used to come home nearly every afternoon with a great tub
in the back of his cart that was full of what he called "peelings." It
was kitchen stuff that he asked the cooks at the different houses
where he delivered milk, to save for him. They threw rotten
vegetables, fruit parings, and scraps from the table into a tub, and
gave them to him at the end of a few days. A sour, nasty mess it
always was, and not fit to give any creature.

Sometimes, when he had not many "peelings," he would go to
town and get a load of decayed vegetables, that grocers were glad
to have him take off their hands.

This food, together with poor hay, made the cows give very poor
milk, and Jenkins used to put some white powder in it, to give it
"body," as he said.

Once a very sad thing happened about the milk, that no one knew
about but Jenkins and his wife. She was a poor, unhappy creature,
very frightened at her husband, and not daring to speak much to
him. She was not a clean woman, and I never saw a worse-looking
house than she kept.

She used to do very queer things, that I know now no housekeeper
should do. I have seen her catch up the broom to pound potatoes in
the pot. She pounded with the handle, and the broom would fly up
and down in the air, dropping dust into the pot where the potatoes
were. Her pan of soft-mixed bread she often left uncovered in the
kitchen, and sometimes the hens walked in and sat in it.